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It was originally a single doc, but at that size google docs started to lag horribly and I couldn't keep it updated so I had to switch to this setup. I made a quick compiled pdf version though, it's not pretty but it's searchable.

Thank you! Great work

Thoughts ripple out, birthing others

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Previously, Crimson Storm Unleashed was meant to be a combo with Flesh-Flensing Barrage from the looks of the 2 charms. Now that FFB has been limited to 3 or Essence stacks, do you have any plan to revisit the former and perhaps tweak its mechanism a bit?

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Previously, Crimson Storm Unleashed was meant to be a combo with Flesh-Flensing Barrage from the looks of the 2 charms. Now that FFB has been limited to 3 or Essence stacks, do you have any plan to revisit the former and perhaps tweak its mechanism a bit?

Good point. I removed the requirement to make all the attacks against the same target, so you can start flensing another target once you reach the cap.

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For the most part, this is an amazing piece of homebrew, definitely hanging out with ACoD at the top of my "could basically just use as canon" list. The charms are flavorful, powerful, and intuitive and I'm beyond impressed by the sheer number you've made.

I'm conflicted about how the Shintai's turned out, though. On the one hand, using Shintai's as a way to feed Supernalesque essence requirement waivers is a stroke of brilliance. It really delivers on a 2E feeling of being able to access charms based around a Yozi's theme while also retaining the intuitive balance and structure of ability charm trees. Also, tying it to Caste theoretically allows for infernals that embody different interpretations of each Yozi. That being said, I find that the actual execution is a little bit "lumpy." I say that tying it to caste is theoretically a way to differentiate Shintais they mostly have ability spreads that favor one Caste so heavily that it is hard to imagine why you would take it with any other. For instance, there is almost no conceivable reason to take Scarlet Rapture or The King Still Stands if you aren't a Slayer because their spreads so heavily favor those two classes.

I tried to think up some ways to fix it, but most of them come down to, "Shintais need more and varied charms attached to them" and that is a big ask on a project already as big as this. The other way I think this would be fixable would be to actually narrow up some of the Shintais and create some additional ones.

Lastly on Shintais, I have a love-hate relationship with the activation conditions. Some of them are truly brilliant for both flavor and gameplay balance. Heuristic Logos, for instance, is amazing. It is so evocative of a particular type of character and it sets up so many "Just according to keikaku" moments. Both Black Mirror and Tenebrous Apotheosis have similarly reasonable to meet and flavorful activation conditions. Then there are ones like Scarlet Rapture which just seems insane. In a certain type of campaign, I could see this getting a lot of activation, but if you are doing one which doesn't typically feature Size 5 battlegroups or similar, the activation probably won't come up. I guess, musing about activation conditions, the best ones are built around how you play the game and manuevering your character and their enemies into position to demon-out and crush your foes while the weaker ones seem to amount to "did you buy Command/Cult 3+ or does your GM like big battlegroups and they cannot lie."

All in all, though, I agree with your statement that this is completely playable and I look forward to seeing what you add and change.

Exalted is an aesthetic.

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On the one hand, using Shintai's as a way to feed Supernalesque essence requirement waivers is a stroke of brilliance. It really delivers on a 2E feeling of being able to access charms based around a Yozi's theme while also retaining the intuitive balance and structure of ability charm trees.

Really happy to read this; it's exactly what I was trying to do with the shintai system. As for the rest, they're definitely issues that I've been struggling to find good solutions for. Shintai activation triggers are a particularly thorny one since it seems everyone I talk to has different ideas about which ones are reasonably achievable and which ones are too impractical to work. Probably does just come down to individual player/ST styles.

In regards to charm distributions, my current solution is indeed to write more charms that give each shintai more varied things to do across castes. It's slow going because at this point all the charms that quickly and intuitively spring to mind for me are charms I've already written up, but fleshing out the more narrow trees and shintais is what I'm currently working on so I hope to get some done in the future.

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I think that part of the issue with activation triggers is that, by the end of 2E, Shintais were all over the place in terms of power and function. Some were apocalyptic transformations, some were minor, Kamen Rider transformations, some were literally just normal attacks with weird fluff; ultimately, this just means there are people walking around with different wants from their Shintais. For transparency's sake, I like a combo of Kamen Rider transformations and big, radical transhumanism transformations. This is bad luck because the approach that you are taking to Shintais is that they're mutually exclusive and all about as powerful as each other. Which basically means that whichever you go for, somebody will find it disappointing. Such is life, though, right?

I guess the easy way out is to provide multiple conditions for activation. Maybe offering a choice of conditions at character creation so players and storytellers can work together to make sure that this fairly Splat defining feature sees use. It might also be worth investigating giving each Caste a Shintai activation option that could pop up in response to caste specific setbacks and difficulties. The nuclear option is just letting people pay motes and willpower (10m, 1-2wp, I would guess), but that is boring compared to the flavorful options there now.

If you are up for a slightly more radical redesign, could also make Shintai effects more Caste-Power-like by giving them three effects, a weak always on thing, possibly no better than a control spell ish effect, a reasonably strong power with an activation condition that is basically impossible not to hit when using powers within the Shintai's themes, and a big, show stopper effect which takes lots of effort to activate and could not even come up depending on the campaign. Again, that might be a big ask and could bloat the Shintai's so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, if you are having some trouble coming up with charms, I highly suggest adding in more Yozis for charms to align with. Adding new thematics could give you some more creative juice and, since 3E is trying to expand the scope of hell to not be about the five titanic douchebags plotting a prison break, more yozis is a good way to broaden the scope of hell. Also, if you would like some inspirational material, Earth Scorpion's Homebrew has some pretty robust charm sets which could be decent jumping off points for making Szoreny, Kimbrey, and Oramus charms. Also, bits of the homebrew contain links to documents for Isidoros and Hegera charm sets too. It's very much of a 2E transhumanist- titanomachia design paradigm, but so were a lot of the canon 2E charms and you did a great job adapting those.

Exalted is an aesthetic.

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Also, if you are having some trouble coming up with charms, I highly suggest adding in more Yozis for charms to align with. Adding new thematics could give you some more creative juice and, since 3E is trying to expand the scope of hell to not be about the five titanic douchebags plotting a prison break, more yozis is a good way to broaden the scope of hell. Also, if you would like some inspirational material, Earth Scorpion's Homebrew has some pretty robust charm sets which could be decent jumping off points for making Szoreny, Kimbrey, and Oramus charms. Also, bits of the homebrew contain links to documents for Isidoros and Hegera charm sets too. It's very much of a 2E transhumanist- titanomachia design paradigm, but so were a lot of the canon 2E charms and you did a great job adapting those.

At the very least, I think Kimbery could be added for some not-Malfeas Sail charms (although given Malfeas has the enviromental hazard generation already, that might not be needed). Given Kimbery was kinda the 6th ranger of the Reclamation, adding her in might be an intreasitng place to go.

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I like your work. I'm a bit concerned about the activation conditions of some of the shintais. Black Mirror Shintai requiring a defining negative tie seems harsh. It might have to do with different playstyles, but having/cultivating a defining ties with an npc seems like a once per campaign type of effect to me. Am I missing something?

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I like your work. I'm a bit concerned about the activation conditions of some of the shintais. Black Mirror Shintai requiring a defining negative tie seems harsh. It might have to do with different playstyles, but having/cultivating a defining ties with an npc seems like a once per campaign type of effect to me. Am I missing something?

Iiiiiiit probably is too harsh? But it's a powerful effect to be able to throw out, and it's the easiest kind of defining to create since making people hate you is a lot easier to do than making them love you. Ultimately the problem is I have no idea whether it's too harsh or not, it's the kind of thing that's almost impossible to figure out just by thinking about it and I'm never going to have groups of playtesters large enough to give statistically useful feedback all trying to use Black Mirror in game and reporting on how practical it is. My advice would be that if you're using these rules and are finding it too difficult to trigger, drop the requirement down to major and see how that works out for you.

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Of course... but the thing is, that building negative intimacies to a defining level against yourself also seems a bit obvious. My suggestion would be to allow activation when confronted by someone with a defining intimacy that is antithetical to one of your own defining intimacies. That way it is more about the meeting of opposite beliefs and less about making your enemies hate you. I don't really know if that will make activation easier though. As you said it can be pretty much impossible to figure out by thought alone.

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I see you didn't include Running To Forever's 2nd Purchase (the one that generalized the ability).
Couldn't find the right place to put it?

Also is this compiled into a master document or would I need to do so manually?

It's been a long time since I wrote the athletics charms, I don't remember much about my thought process at the time. Seems like a fine effect to include as a repurchase if you'd like to use it though.

I initially broke it up into mini documents because my computer couldn't handle viewing a full-sized one, let one editing it. I've upgraded since though, so here's a master document for you.